MATTER IS THE NECTAR OF WRITING
Dianna Frid:
Matter Is the Nectar of Writing
La materia es el néctar de la escritura
University Galleries of Illinois State University is pleased to present Dianna Frid: Matter Is the Nectar of Writing
La materia es el néctar de la escritura,
January 12 – March 1, 2026.
Dianna Frid gratefully acknowledges the generous support
she received from the Canada Council for the Arts
and from the Illinois Arts Council for this project.
[See the press release below...]
Dianna Frid:
Matter Is the Nectar of Writing
La materia es el néctar de la escritura
Excerpt from the press release:
University Galleries of Illinois State University is pleased to present Dianna Frid: Matter Is the Nectar of Writing / La materia es el néctar de la escritura from January 12 through March 1, 2026.
Featuring new and recent tapestries, artist’s books, embroideries, photographs, mixed-media works, and sculpture, this exhibition is the U.S. premiere of a group of works that Frid created in Mexico and Chicago from 2023 to 2025. In 2025, most of these artworks were exhibited in concurrent exhibitions at two libraries in Oaxaca, Mexico: the Biblioteca Andrés Henestrosa and the Biblioteca Fray Francisco de Burgoa (Burgoa Library). Related works from 2015 through 2025 are also included in the exhibition at University Galleries.
Frid was born in Mexico City and immigrated to Vancouver with her family as a teenager. She has lived in Chicago since 2001. Being from three countries and speaking two languages influences her work in multiple ways. In her words, her work “makes visible the tactile manifestations of language … exploring the relationships between writing and drawing, and the overlaps of transcription, translation, and legibility.” The exhibition title addresses Frid’s ongoing interest in untranslatability between languages and between the linguistic and the non-verbal. In Spanish, materia has two meanings: both subject and matter. And while nectar is a sugary fluid produced by plants to attract pollinators, in Greek mythology, it is the drink of the gods linked to immortality. Throughout her explorations of texts and textiles, Frid combines and re-combines materials—including mica, iron oxide, gold leaf, obsidian, pochote, and cochineal—to address time, transformation, process, pleasure, and geological forces.
The works in this exhibition are inspired by Frid’s longstanding encounter with “worm-holed” premodern and early modern books at the Burgoa Library. Many may see destruction in larvae consuming the matter of pages, chewing on them while living an entire life cycle within a book. Frid instead recognizes—in the transformation of matter—the life force of insects that turns books into dwellings. She also points to the idea of a cosmic wormhole as a hypothesized means of traveling through time and space.
A monograph will be published by University Galleries following the exhibition. Designed by Alice J. Lee, the book will include essays by Toby Altman, Erica Warren, and Melissa Johnson; a poem by Jane Hirshfield; and an extended conversation between Dianna Frid and Kendra Paitz.
Dianna Frid: Matter Is the Nectar of Writing / La materia es el néctar de la escritura is curated by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator.